Sailfish OS Reviews

Monday, 17 March 2014

Could Jolla drop Beta sign with Sailfish OS 1.0.4.20 Ohijärvi

Jolla system update: Sailfish Ohijärvi 1.0.4.20

Urgent: Disable Openrepos before installing (tip from Kimmo Lindholm, thanks!)

Install: Settings --> About product --> pulley menu, check for updates. WLAN recommended.

System update in short

This is the fourth larger update for Sailfish, released on March 17, 2014. Jolla has announced that this update will bring the operating system to a ready stage for global commercial distribution. Does it get the system out of "Beta" is left for users to decide - In my personal opinion, unless the system doesn't enable all the phone specs it's not ready, but beta might have been changed to delta. LTE/4G support isn't there quite yet. Navigation is still missing. WLAN n might cause issues. Browser is better, but far from perfect. However, Sailfish has raised its sails - performance upgrades makes this phone fast now. Jolla has delivered a nice update with a lot of visual and functional improvements and bug fixes - let's get into these:

Top12 picks from the update (full changelog - together.jolla.com)

WLAN tethering: Sharing your mobile network connection to other devices via WLAN is now possible from the settings > system menu.
Landsape support extended: Apps "Mail", "Messages" and "Notes" added
Camera: Selectable ISO (100-400), delay optins for shutter, new cover, selectable exposure value (EV -2 to +2). Grid added, especially good when photographing for a new ambience.
Browser: New browser engine should enable better browsing experience. Fixes still needed.
Virtual keyboard: New fonts and better visuals are there for a better writing experience.
Calendar: Events sync for both directions with Google calendar. Editing google events in phone (time, topic, description) is possible, but change of the sub-calendar will be implemented later.
Email: Sync work better in selected interval. You can also find options to select the sending account & importance of the mail (tap on the three dots).
Store: New visuals, much better user experience. E.g. cCategories are moved to the bottom of the main screen (earlier on pulley menu)
WLAN connection: Connection should hold up slightly better now, but there are still isuues when using WLAN n.
Bluetooth connection: Syncing contacts with Bluetooth enabled for contacts, but only for a few phone models. Sync for events, and more phone models, is implemented later.
People: Improved vcf (contact card) import
The Other Half: The unique ID of TOH added to system info. This ID is needed e.g. when selling the phone - Jolla needs the number to reset the TOH for a new user. (yes, all TOH's are personal)
More: Some new settings, peformance improvements, bug fixes and visuals (e.g. tap-gesture on the lock screen lifts up the screen for a short moment, enabling a peek on battery, online status and mobile network info.) See all in the full changelog.

Known issues not yet fixed on this release

4G/LTE connection. Official statement: LTE supported countries and operators will be published later.
Camera support for more Android apps (still not working in Facebook, Twitter)
Navigation feature for Jolla's HERE Maps. No news about development. Several Android navigation apps are reported to work, some better, some worse.
WLAN n stability. Connection lost sometimes, especially when Bluetooth on at the same time.
SD card support is improved now, but sometimes the card must be manually reattached to access the files.

Problems after updating the system?

Searh link, tag "bug" & word "1.0.4.20", Jolla Together community portal

Upcoming Sailfish update releases

Jolla has stated that updates are planned to be released monthly. This one was a bit late, but now we don't need to wait a full month for the next one.

Previous updates

Sailfish Ohijärvi ?

Another update named by a lake. Ohijärvi is a very small lake (0,102 km²) located near Uusikaupunki, Finland.

Jolla has stated that they are using lakes of Finland in naming updates of Sailfish OS. There are 187 888 lakes in Finland, including the small ones, so we might have more than few updates coming. Looking at the size of the Ohijärvi, we could speculate that this is not a big update, but it sure makes using the phone much nicer again. I'm still holding my breath for Sailfish Saimaa!

Monday, 3 March 2014

Jolla Sailfish app development: LUT Code Camp

February 24-28, 2014 Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) arranged an open Sailfish OS coding week

Photo by Kalle Kareinen, IT student, LUT

LUT Code Camp: Students encoding software for Jolla phone's Sailfish operating system

Lappeenranta University of Technology arranged a week-long intensive course Code Camp to computer science students. Cource included teamwork to design and build software for the finnish mobile phone company Jolla's new Sailfish operating system.

The course started on Monday, February 24 with the theory and ended on Friday, February 28 with a playful competition which took place between the students, judged by the teachers and representatives from Jolla. Jolla also lend 3 devices to the students for a month, enabling them to get familiar with it and have a deeper insight to the development.

"There is a strong win-win situation for both our students and the business guests, as the company (Jolla) may introduce software platforms for future programmers, and students and staff (LUT) will have the opportunity to explore the company's fresh technology first-hand," says junior researcher Antti Knutas.

Code Camp cource offered the basics of just finalized Sailfish operating system. Then, students developed applications utilizing the skills learned. In-depth learning of practices, and the details and good practices could be found on their own and the team's doing.

"Code Camp aimed at achieving the same team working atmosphere which is needed in working life. At the same time a recent technology is learned. Previously, we have taken courses on web, tablet and game programming, and now the smartphone programming," explains Knutas.

Technical expertise of the course was offered Jolla by the company's technical expert Pami Ketolainen and interest group coordinator Alberto Martinez.

"The new operating system is investing on easy user experience. Sailfish operating system works with gestures and a person can at the same time to do many things, e.g. to download a file at the same time as the user chats, writes e-mail, uses Skype or plays a silent game," says Martinez who participates in a course on Tuesday.

"Initial Special features include the fact that there are no solid buttons, but the phone is used with gestures. Users can run several programs at the same time and use the applications via so-called shrunked icons [translator's note: active covers]," Knutas explains.

Source: LUT (translated from finnish)

Friday, 28 February 2014

Jolla phone news: MWC2014 Overview

Jolla at Mobile World Congress 2014 - Short overview

Jolla Oy is a finnish mobile phone manufacturer. They introduced smartphone Jolla at Helsinki, Finland at November 27. 2013. Jolla is powered by new operating system Sailfish OS, also developed by Jolla Oy. This operating system is based on Meego, seen on Nokia's phone model N9.

Jolla Oy was present at Mobile World Congress 2014 with a 100 square meters booth at hall 1. Event took place at Barcelona, Spain at February 23. - 27. 2014.

Speeches and interviews

Marc Dillon, Co- founder and Head of Software at Jolla gave speeches and interviews during all 4 days of the event. Antti Saarnio, Chairman of the Jolla Board, was not seen at the booth but he was also interviewed and shared interesting news about Jolla's future. What we learned from these two:

Jolla has sold their first production batch almost in total (rumoured to be 50 000 phones)
Jolla is currently available for purchace at EU, Norway and Switzerland. Jolla is expanding theirs sales to India by September and Russia before that. Also China is planned for this year
The company was surprised by the interest towards Jolla brand. In advance they expected the Sailfish brand to have a bigger share at the event
Sailfish OS has reached a commercial stage. Beta sign is dropped in the beginning of March with the next Software update. New updates are still delivered to customers monthly
New phone model is planned to 2015
In overall, the company was very satisfied to the huge amount of interest towards their booth

Stefano Mosconi, CTO of Jolla, was also present and gave an interesting interview to telefonino.net. You can find this interview (n italian) here. An interview with Carol Chen, community chief at Jolla, can be found here. This one is in english, shared by Jolla Es.

New partnerships

Rovio, a finnish software company, presented a 3rd party The Other Half for Jolla with their Angry Birds content. The final product is excpected to be seen by the end of June.
Makia, a finnish clothing company, presented a 3rd party The Other Half for Jolla with their Makia content. The final product is excpected to be seen by the end of June.
F-Secure, a finnish security software company, offers their Younited security cloud service to Jolla phone. Customers will enjoy gigabytes of free secure cloud storage integrated with their Jolla device
Jolla co-operates with Tieto in sharing the Sailfish OS to other phone manufacturers. Jolla is interested to offer Sailfish OS as an option to all phone manufacturers developing phones with different platforms

Sailfish OS to Android devices

By June 2014 Jolla is introducing a launcer app for Android users, enabling Sailfish user experience for some Android devices. Which devices are supported remains yet unknown. As Sailfish OS is an OpenSource platform, the full operating system is excpected to be shared also, enabling installing it to other devices instead of their current OS. Jolla community has already begun with this, and Jolla OY introduced their operating system running on several devices during the event. At Jolla booth, Sailfish OS was seen on

Nexus 4
Galaxy S3 (i9305)
Xiaomi Mi2
Mediatek ZTE X950 (introduced on the 4th day)

Sailfish OS has been seen earlier on:
Nexus 7
Acer Iconia W500
Nokia N9
Nokia N950
Sony Xperia
HP Mini
O2 Joggler
PackardBell Butterfly Touch

Jolla Labs

Additional to Android devices, there were some very interesting 3rd party products introduced at Jolla Labs table:

Kimmo Lindholm's TOHOLED, representing an extra OLED screen on the back of Jolla, showing the time and notifications
Harware keyboard QWERTY TOH, representing The Other Half with a keyboard coming out of the phone.
RGB LED TOH by iProtoXi, representing a LED equipped back cover which changes the color of the LEDS by orientation of the phone, or by additional proximity sensor on the back cover

Jollagirls

The interesting products and software would not have gathered their well earned crowd without the great work by Jollagirls on the booth. Sailor outfits were visible, girls were beautiful and they were smiling all the four event days. Additional to that, they expanded the interest outside the event by sharing a lot of photos and videos via their instagram channel. Great work!

Jolla communities

This very important 3rd party, sharing information and marketing the new company, was well present at the event and shared knowledge of Jolla to the world. Review Jolla Blog wasn't on site, but several articles and photo & video galleries from each day have been popular. On site reporting has been shared at least by Jolla Users, Jolla Es & AllBoutN9 Thanks for your great work!

What to learn

Jolla is a new company sailing towards bigger harbours with a rather small boat. There could have been even more shouting on Twitter, blogs and forums to wake the interest of the popular newspapers and mobile phone sites. There could have been more official press releases and community informing during the event. Jolla could also have encouraged their supporters for even more sharing with some campaigns. The event itsels was organized almost perfectly, but as the company strategy seems to be marketing mostly via communities, workers and individual happy customers, Jolla can never thank these parties too much for what they are doing.

Mobile World Congress 2015

Are we seeing Jolla again? They were present 2013 with a congress room, 2014 with a bigger booth, and looking at the feedback, I'm pretty sure we will. The event will again take place at Fira Barcelona at Friday 27 February to Sunday 01 March 2015 (yet to be confirmed).

Is this the confirmation (see the hashtag used by Marc):

After #mwc15 V2 pic.twitter.com/a6L3XLx4j4
— Marc Dillon (@MarcDillonDotFi) February 27, 2014

Read more: All articles about MWC2014

Special thanks to Jolla Es for great On Site Reporting, keep it up!
[Un agradecimiento especial a Jolla Es de gran Sobre la Información del sitio, sigan así!]

Thursday, 27 February 2014

Photos and videos, Jolla Phone at MWC2014, Day4

Marc Dillon attracting people with speech (photo by Filip Klebzcyk)

Jolla phone introduction at Mobile World Congress 2014
Photos and videos from Day 3

Sailfish OS running on Android devices (by MobileLinuxNews)

Jolla (by @iWozik)

Last morning (by Jollagirls, instagram)

RGB LED The Other Half (Jolla Labs) and Jolla (by @raphaelbuehler)

Marc Dillon (ny @myphonegr)

Marc Dillon (by @jollausers)

Steve Lau siu ying from Jolla introducing the phone (by @fk_lx)

Farewell (by @jollausers)

Farewell (by @cybette)

Farewell (by Jollagirls, instagram)

Empty booth (by @Jollausers)

More: photos and videos from MWC2014, Day 3
More: photos and videos from MWC2014, Day 2
More: photos and videos from MWC2014, Day 1

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Jolla phone news: Price down, new seller

Verkkokauppa.com starts selling Jolla phones in Finland for a price of 389,90€

Image of the shopping site (translated to english by Google):

Until today, Jolla was sold in Finland exclusively by DNA Shops. Now verkkokauppa.com joins the competition with a slightly lower price. Verkkokauppa.com is already selling Jolla, and promises a delivery to Finland in 3-5 working days. Jolla is available with either black or white The Other Half, additional TOH's (see images) have a price tag of 29,90€

Unfortunately Verkkokauppa.com does not deliver abroad. However, Jolla is planning to start to sell phones in India by September 2014, and in Russia even before that, according to Antti Saarnio. Also China is planned for this year.

Jolla phone is also available in EU, Norway and Switzerland via Jolla's own webshop shop.jolla.com

Sources (finnish): verkkokauppa.com, digitoday.fi

Photos and videos, Jolla Phone at MWC2014, Day3

"We aren't there to collect user data and take your privacy very seriously"
by Marc Dillon at MWC2014 today. This photo was shared by @AllBoutN9

Jolla phone introduction at Mobile World Congress 2014
Photos and videos from Day 3

Sailfish OS update 1.0.4.1 Ohijärvi - What's new (by @AllBoutN9)

Jolla Makia The Other Half. Makia is a finnish clothing company (by @GadgetsBoy)

Jolla Labs: RGB led The Othe Half, developed by iProtoXi

Jolla's Sailsfish OS introduced (video shared by gsmisraelnews)